The present invention relates to the information processing arts. It finds particular application in conjunction with printing and electrophotography, and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it is to be appreciated that the present invention will also find application in other information processing applications which merge variable data into static data.
Print jobs commonly include a mixture of variable and static content. Static content is substantially non-repeating, whereas variable content repeats on a given page, across a plurality of pages, and/or across print jobs. A typical example is a print job including one or more completed electronic forms. The form is static because it is printed each time a completed form is printed. However, the information entered into the electronic form is variable content which will typically differ for each person's completed form. Another example of a print job containing a mixture of variable and static content is a business letter with a standardized letterhead that is printed as part of the letter. The letterhead is static content across business letters, whereas the text of each letter is variable content. Similarly, in high print volume personalized advertising for mailing to customers or other large groups, the basic content is static while certain portions of the advertising are personalized based on information extracted from a customer database.
A print job is typically encoded using a high-level page description language (PDL). The PDL describes the print job in terms of text, fonts and font sizes, image positions and dimensions, vectorized line drawings, background colors and shades, page borders, and the like. The print job PDL is converted into a rasterized image representation by a rasterized image processor (RIP). The rasterized image representation outputs a contone image in the case of color printing, or a bitmap or gray scale image for black-and-white printing. Optionally, the rasterized image representation is compressed. The contone or bitmapped image is forwarded to downstream elements such as a decompression module, and ultimately to a print engine which effectuates printer-specific formatting and the actual printing.
The most recent version of the Xerox variable data intelligent postscript printware PDL (VIPP-2001) supports a reusable document component hint that indicates the associated document component is likely to be reused in the print job. However, there is a need for a mechanism for taking advantage of reusable document component hints to streamline the rasterizing process, especially with respect to document components which are reused across print jobs.
The present invention contemplates a new and improved method and apparatus which overcomes the above-referenced problems and others.